


The Wolf and the Fox

by shealynn88



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/pseuds/shealynn88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love can make a Man a Monster, and a Monster, with the right guidance, can become a Man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wolf and the Fox

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withoutmaps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutmaps/gifts).



For Eddie, the running has always been about that final moment – the taste of blood, the kill, the feast. He's never thought to look at it any other way – it's how he was raised.

It's different for Nicole. She shows him that the running itself can be freedom. When he chases her it's not about the end, it's about the experience - the feeling, the sense of timelessness, the sound and feel of the wind, the way her laughter drifts back to him.

And the final moments are good, too – his long limbs tangled with her delicate ones, their harsh breath and her tongue delicate against his mouth – but it's not everything. 'Everything' is her - _being_ with her, anywhere. In the library, guises carefully in place, or here in the forest, completely themselves, completely in the moment.

***

His parents warn him, of course. _Foxes are trouble_ , they tell him. _Tricksters_ , they say. But this isn't the age of fairy tales anymore, and Eddie is in love.

 _No_ , he tells them. _We're more than our instincts, now. More than our base urges, more than the monsters humans label us._

 _We're going to make history together, just you wait and see..._

***

The watch was his great-grandfather's, once. It had been passed down to his grandfather, his father, and finally to him. It would, if one went with family tradition, go to his son. It's an elegant thing, gold and silver, with a quartz face and delicate silver hands. Nicole admires it frequently, turning it over in her delicate fingers and flashing him that precious, toothy smile.

He gives it to her in lieu of a ring, because they're bucking all the trends and making a new life, separating themselves from all the fairy tale creatures before them, with long memories and bad reputations and bitter, bitter pasts.

***

He's supposed to meet her after classes are over and the sun sets, but he can't wait. They're calling his parents tonight, to tell them the good news, and he's nervous and thrilled and full of puppy-restless excitement...and he finds her in her dorm room wrapped in the limbs of the tall guy from English Lit.

He is numb with horror. Sick. Betrayed.

She laughs at the look on his face. She's completely herself - ears are long and pointed, muzzle tufted with orange, and her sharp, dainty little canines shine as she turns deliberately and licks the guy's face, chin to cheekbone...half possession, half taunt.

Fury rises without being called. Fury and bloodlust.

Instincts, Eddie finds, aren't so easily left behind. She is the Trickster, and he is the Monster of children's stories.

He tears them apart, glories in the carnage and gluts himself on flesh, and for almost an hour he manages to think he's better off without her.

***

When it's done, he finds his grandfather's watch, fittingly, in pieces – like the promise it represented, the bodies behind him, the heart in his chest...like the future he's imagined a thousand times, but never like this.

Anger and bloodlust grow and collapse finally into horror and grief. Nicole had been a cheat, a trickster – a Fox, in every sense of the word. His father would say she got what she deserved - but she'd been his first love. His _only_ love.

The eternally wet shine of blood on silver taunts him with the promise of _almost._

***

He retreats – into the forest. Into himself. He kills without thought and without mercy because there is nothing else left for him.

The tenets don't matter. There are no rules to guide this, no coming back from what he's done. He kills, he rips, he eats, but it's not about hunger anymore. He lets the bloodlust rise because the only other feeling left is pain, eating him alive in slow, painful increments.

***

The old man smells different. Not quite human, not quite _Blutbad_...something else. It makes Eddie pause just long enough, and the old man laughs.

“I've been watching you, young pup,” he says, and Eddie's hackles go up. He welcomes the bloodlust that turns his vision red.

The old man waves him down and sits, and Eddie pauses. The complete lack of concern leaves his instincts cold, confused. The old man doesn't _feel_ like prey. Or predator. What does he want? How does he _dare..._

“Seems to me, you're looking for a Grimm,” the old man says, and Eddie stiffens, sniffs the air. Is this what a Grimm smells like? Wet dog and moss, a vague undercurrent of earth?

“Calm down, now. I'm certainly not one of _them_. But you've got their attention, I promise you. Only a matter of time. Suicide by Grimm, my boy...not a good use of your time.” The old man shrugs. “Or theirs.”

Eddie growls. “What do you know, old man?”

The man smiles up at him, and his face shifts slowly – long muzzle, tufted ears – he _is_ a _Blutbad_. But he's nothing like anything Eddie's seen before.

“Oh, pup. I've been where you are. A long time ago.”

***

His name is Fred, and he's old, and his story is too similar to Eddie's to be ignored. The careful hunts, the cautious life, the distance from humans, and then the Moment. For Fred, the death of his brother. The indiscriminate killing, the sense that enough death, enough bloodlust will dull the pain. And that someone, somewhere, might take notice and end it all.

But Fred had found another way.

Atonement. Sacrifice.

For Nicole and her unfortunate partner, and all the nameless who had come after. It was time to rejoin the world, a modern _Blutbad_. Evolved and humbled.

***

“You need a hobby,” Fred told him. “Something that will take your mind off the hunger. Something that will repair those broken pieces you have inside you.”

“Like what?” Eddie asks.

Fred shrugs. “The journey is the thing, pup. You find your hobby, you find your life.”

Eddie learns french, knits a sweater and learns to play cello before he comes across the manual in a used book store.

The pieces of the watch have flakes of dried blood that fall away when he unwraps it, and he almost puts it away again. Back in the forgotten corner of a drawer where he doesn't have to think about the darkness.

But ultimately, it's about atonement. What he owes for what he took. And even though it's too little and too late, the memories and the repair of this lost promise are all he has to offer his past.

A month later, when he puts that final screw in place, he finds that there's something in him, too, that suddenly fits. Something that feels right, finally, and peaceful.

***

He keeps the watch with him to remember. He stops eating meat, takes his drugs, does his Pilates, and appreciates the finer things in life.

Ultimately, when he hangs out a sign and makes time for a living, it's just like the old man said – his hobby and his life.

Maybe, ultimately, his salvation.


End file.
